Recorded & mixed by Joe Ferla at Avatar Studios, April 2012 at the same sessions that yielded the album Be Still [2012] which Stereophile called “one of the best sounding records we’ve heard by any one in quite awhile.” This all-instrumental album features Dave’s new Quintet with Jon Irabagon on tenor saxophone, Matt Mitchell on piano, Linda Oh on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums.

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We’ve been stepping up our social media as of late. Those connected already have seen regular updates on Dave’s Twitter and Facebook, as well as Greenleaf’s Instagram (@greenleafmusic), Facebook, and Twitter. We’re everywhere all at once.

We’re trying to reach our goal of seeing Dave have 5000 followers on Facebook, so we’re running a promotion that one of our new followers will get a free signed copy of his first album on Greenleaf, Mountain Passages, if we reach 5000. We have a lot more in store for you this fall, so get clicking. Links below.

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Coming to you this fall: new music by Dave Douglas and Donny McCaslin. These two albums——Dave’s Be Still, and Donny’s Casting for Gravity——are strikingly different. A collection of deeply person acoustic hymns and folk songs arranged for Quintet and Dave’s first ever album with a vocalist beside Donny’s latest outing finding him deeper than ever into electronics, soundscapey synths with heavy dub rhythms. Of course, we here at Greenleaf celebrate this diversity whole-heartedly. And we hope you enjoy the coming music.

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We’re happy to announce the preorder of Linda Oh’s album Initial Here——her second album as a leader, and her first for Greenleaf. Get your order in at iTunes for the MP3s, or at the Greenleaf store for the CD (ships 5/22).

Preorder Initial Here at:

We’re also happy to let our subscribers know that the album is up in-full at the Cloud Player for an exclusive First Listen. And any new subscriber that wants to hear it, your new subscription comes with a free copy of the CD (ships 5/22).

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We’re extremely excited and happy to have added bassist Linda Oh to our artist stable this year. If you’ve been following this little blog of ours, you’ve already seen some photos of her from the Tea For 3 tour she was a part of with Dave Douglas, Enrico Rava, and Avishai Cohen, as well as the Orange Afternoon Quintet gig at Jazz Standard this past winter. Not to mention that you probably heard all the great work she did on GPS2: Orange Afternoons with Dave, Ravi Coltrane, Vijay Iyer, and Marcus Gilmore.

Greenleaf will be releasing her new album, Initial Here, worldwide on May 22nd, 2012. Expect to hear some audio from the session soon.

As we sift through our epically full inboxes and move further and further away from vacation daze, we can’t help but get a little nostalgic for 2011—even as it’s just passed. There was a new website, a new music series, new artists, new albums… it seems everything was NEW last year. So before we can move on to all the goings-on we have scheduled this calendar year, a quick recap of some of the music we released in 2011 is necessary for us in this crazy hit-it-and-forget-it internet world we’ve all grown accustomed to.

Donny went from a sparse but blazing tenor trio album Recommended Tools [2008] to the large ensemble Declaration album [released on Sunnyside, 2010] all the way to this electric album filled with angular post-bop, blistering polyphonic funk, backbeat-driven R&B, and delicate, ethereal balladry. And we thank him for it. It’s partly due to this music that the Key Motion Quintet came to be—but we’ll get to that.

Curtis’ debut album sounds more like his fourth or fifth. The depth of the compositions and the blowing from everyone on board sold us the second we heard it. As Dave put it early on: “The pieces on this recording are like little puzzles with moving parts that fit together in the strangest ways.” If you didn’t pick this album up, you should, because it burns from start to finish.

As everyone knows, we like to take on at least one bigger project every year, and this was our 2011. And really, what better way to allow Dave to be his compositore prolificano than to record three disparate groups providing the vehicle for his new music. We’re glad that you agreed and supported the series, both as the digital albums, and in the Three Views box set. We hope to do another batch of GPS’s this year, so stay tuned.

All of that music, and all our music from the past 7 years of operation are housed at our new Cloud Player. Subscribers can access it all for a nominal annual fee. It’s our way of saying that catalog isn’t dead, at least ours. We’ll be making updates including First Listen’s to new albums regularly. Consider joining our community by subscribing.

This is the one that we were most excited about hearing around the office when we first heard of the possibility. “What would it be like?,” we thought. Well, it sounded like nothing we’d heard out of Dave before, in the best and most exciting way possible. The tunes Dave chose for this ensemble were perfectly matched, some spacey and floating dripping with tinkerings, some unabashedly sharp and driving.

GPS at Jazz Standard

Lucky folks in NYC continue to get lucky around the holidays. It seems every year Dave pulls a rabbit out of his hat and throws a shindig at somewhere in town to celebrate the year. 2011 was no different with Dave bringing in not only the three ensembles chronicling the GPS releases, but also a new band co-led by Donny McCaslin called Key Motion. Expect to hear more from that band, and all these shows in the coming months.

A special thanks to all those who got involved in the charity drive we put on at the end of the year. Thanks to you, we were able to contribute more that we hoped to the charities we listed and that you suggested. We hope the 17-player autographed copy of the Three Views box finds a nice place on your mantle or CD rack—you deserve it. We hope we can do something similar next year. Again, thanks for your generosity.

What else?

I’m sure I’m forgetting to write a bunch of things—music or otherwise—that Dave Douglas & Greenleaf were a part of in 2011. But maybe that’s a good thing. As Dylan said, “Don’t Look Back.” We don’t want to push the past too hard, just remind you of it in all it’s glory. And now that we’ve reminded you, onwards and upwards to 2012. Expect good things.

It seems like the holidays come earlier and earlier every year. So today and for one day only, put down your turkey basters because we’re offering our complete catalog* for 25% off. That includes GPS MP3 albums for as little as $3.75, live sets for as little as $5, CDs for as little as $9, Sheet Music for as little as $11, and Subscriptions for as little at $18!

* The 25% discount is applicable to all products except the Three Views box set, and the educational sheet music packages.